In my day job, I was very happy to get to facilitate a conversation between Bishop Barron and the students of Princeton University. The event was hosted by the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Life at Princeton, and Bishop Barron fielded student questions about their challenges in evangelization for an hour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFWYMEA22Ek Read More
Bridging the Divide Within Feminism
At Newsweek, I'm discussing some of the tensions within modern feminism, and where we can find common ground across the abortion divide. Women are divided over how to respond to a world that treats us as defective men. Do we try to elbow our way in by adjusting our lives to a norm that may… Read More
Cheering on Superman Smashing the Klan
My husband and I were guests together on God and Comics to talk about Gene Luen Yang's Superman Smashes the Klan. The book is great, and I really enjoyed talking about it with the three nerdy clergymen of God and Comics. Yang is updating a Superman radio serial ("Clan of the Fiery Cross"), which was… Read More
‘Cuties’ Is Dangerous, Even If It Wasn’t Meant To Be
At The American Conservative, I'm talking about why visual representations of exploitation are almost always pulled into a kind of exploitation themselves. The initial advertising for Cuties presented the hypersexualization without any hint of critique. It showed the young actresses in provocative poses, and made it appear that the intended audience for the film was… Read More
Bad Art Warps Our Vision
At First Things, I take a crack at explaining why smutty art is bad in the way airbrushing and CGI Yoda are bad. It’s the same reason we should object to airbrushed skin and photoshopped waists. It’s the same reason we should object to sending barely pubescent girls or anorexic teens down the catwalks to model clothes ostensibly being… Read More
Tiny Book Club: My new newsletter
I've started a newsletter on Substack, called Tiny Book Club. Every month, I pick a good essay or article, invite in a special guest for a dialogue, and then host a discussion with all of the subscribers. It's a book club for readings much much shorter than a book. We kicked off in August with… Read More
Keeping Vaclav Benda’s Door Open
At Mere Orthodoxy, I laid out my problems with some of Rod Dreher's recent writing on race and soft totalitarianism, drawing on his own Live Not By Lies for an alternate model of witness. The most serious danger Woke Capital poses isn’t to the people forced to adopt nonsensical cant or take implicit bias tests… Read More
Will the Real Mrs. America Please Stand Up
I reviewed Hulu/FX's Mrs. America for The American Interest. The show turns on one question: Who gets to claim the mantle of a women’s movement? In episode four, Schlafly and Friedan square off in a debate. Both women relish the fight—Friedan more obviously, exclaiming “God, I’d like to burn you at the stake,” just as… Read More
Vulnerability and Visibility with the ASP
The American Solidarity Party invited me to be one of the featured speakers at their 2020 convention, and I spoke on vulnerability and visibility (in a speech that was an extension of my piece, "Locating Our Invisible Wounds" at Comment). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZVIZ2xmzg0 One way I went beyond the original article was weaving in Lewis Hyde's discussion… Read More
Recommending Playborhood
Philanthropy Daily is collecting reading suggestions for coronatide. I was obviously tempted to suggest The Ghost Map or Microbe Hunters, both of which I love. But I decided to go with something more focused on how we can gather again. We're still a long way from being able to gather, but, even after a vaccine, many streets will be… Read More